esent in person and see that
the affair was properly managed. Mrs. Hooker, however, was fully equal
to the occasion, her convention was a marked success and she proved to
be one of the most valuable acquisitions to the ranks of workers for
woman suffrage. She soon learned that the opposition to be overcome was
far greater than she had imagined, and after nearly thirty years'
effort, not even in her own State have women been able to secure their
enfranchisement. It seems, however, a bit of poetic justice that this
convention, which was to lift the movement for woman suffrage to a
higher plane than it ever before had occupied, should have been the
first to invite to its platform Victoria C. Woodhull, whose advent
precipitated a storm of criticism compared to which all those that had
gone before were as a summer shower to a Missouri cyclone.

[Illustration: Isabella Beecher Hooker]

On December 21, 1870, Mrs. Woodhull had gone to Washington with a
memorial praying Congress to enact such laws as were necessary for
enabling women to exercise the right to vote vested in them by the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. This was
presented in the Senate by Harris, of Louisiana, and in the House by
Julian, of Indiana, referred to the judiciary committees and ordered
printed. She had taken this action without consulting any of the
suffrage leaders and they were as much astonished to hear of it as were
the rest of the world. When they arrived at the capital another
surprise awaited them. On taking up the papers they learned that Mrs.
Woodhull was to address the judiciary committee of the House of
Representatives the very morning their convention was to open. Miss
Anthony hastened to confer with Mrs. Hooker, who was a guest at the
home of Senator Pomeroy, and to urge that they should be present at
this hearing and learn what Mrs. Woodhull proposed to do. Mrs. Hooker
emphatically declined, but the senator said: "This is not politics. Men
never could work in a political party if they stopped to investigate
each member's antecedents and associates. If you are going into a
fight, you must accept every help that offers."

Finally they postponed the opening of their convention till afternoon
and, on the morning of January 11, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Hooker, Paulina
Wright Davis and Hon. A. G. Riddle appeared in the judiciary committee
room. None of them had met Mrs. Woodhull, whom they found to be a
beautiful woman